Another pocket watch
by Milena73
Summary: This is set sometime in future. Ressler discovers something about Reddington that shocks him. He arranges a meeting to confront Red. (I'm not a native speaker. Please, be gentle with me. :) Editing is appreciated!) Story was planned as a one-shot but I was asked to continue. So here is chapter 5.
1. Chapter 1

Red was surprised, even a little annoyed, when instead of Lizzy Donald entered the hotel suite. The annoyance was directed rather against Lizzy than against Ressler, who looked young and unfamiliar with the casual jeans and the modern grey jacket. At least, Lizzy had said, SHE wanted to meet him. Still, she constantly surprised Red with unpredictable actions, and he didn't like it.

"Donald!" He exclaimed, accepting the given situation quickly. "What the hell are YOU doing here?"

"I made Liz lie to you," Don admitted, still standing by the door, feeling uncomfortable. "I wanted to make sure you would meet me. Now - and alone." He looked at Dembe who stood next to him.

Red nodded to Dembe who left as a result the lounge of the hotel suite and closed the door behind him.

"If you had told me the reason, I would have met you." Red smiled at Donald, sensing the fear and the hesitation of the younger man. "But now you are here anyway. What can I do for you?" His relationship to Ressler had changed since that fateful day in the box. He had had a look into the soul of the younger man, who sacrificed himself so heroically to something that maybe wasn't even worth it, and he felt some kind of sympathy. In any case, he didn't distrust Donald, although he was alerted.

"That's... not so easy." Suddenly Don felt discouraged and undetermined. When he had asked Liz to arrange the meeting he had been quite sure about, but now he suddenly didn't know anymore whether he really wanted to hear the truth.

"Has anything happened?" Red asked and looked at Donald carefully. "You okay? You are so pale as if you had seen a ghost. Please, do sit down." He gestured to the place beside him on the sofa.

When Don crossed the luxurious room and sat down on the offered place, he felt as if he was wrapped in cotton or in a cocoon. Everything seemed to be so unreal that he wasn't sure whether it wasn't just a dream. A nightmare. Soon he would wake up and everything would be all right.

But it didn't happen. He didn't wake up. Instead he still sat on the sofa, next to Reddington. "I... I saw the pocket watch," he said after a while.

Red looked at him in surprise, wasn't sure about what the younger man spoke of. Then, however, it began to dawn on him, and his eyes darkened.

"On that day... when I accompanied Liz," Don reminded him. "I thought, it would be Kirchhoff's watch and that you would have kept it as a souvenir but..."

Red swallowed his annoyance about the unwelcome curiosity. For so many years he had tried to find out something, anything about HIS pocket watch, and Donald, of all people in the world, should know something about it? "Do you know the woman in the picture?"

"Yeah..." Don withstood Red's glare. "But first, I need to know where YOU know her from."

Red hated it to reveal information when he wasn't sure where they could lead to. He hated it not being in control of a situation. His thoughts came tumbling, why or where Donald could know the woman from. However, there were too many variations. "Who is she?"

"The answer isn't as simple as the question," Don replied. "You first. Please."

Red looked in Donald's clear, blue eyes which looked at him almost beseechingly and desperately. For any reason he felt touched, and if...


	2. Chapter 2

"I met her about 35 years ago in a bar," Red finally said. "At that time I was still that what you would call an honourable man. A Naval Intelligence officer, groomed for Admiral. God, it feels as if it was ages ago, in a different life." He shook his head in disbelief and smiled bitterly. "However, there was one little failure - I had a weakness for women. To be honest I constantly cheated on my wife. And then there was this girl, and she was so... gorgeous, beautiful, charming, witty, so sexy... I fell in love with her immediately!" An enthusiastic expression appeared on his face while he got carried away with the recollections of the unknown beauty.

"We had an affair," he went on after a while. "It was unambiguously an affair between married people who weren't married with each other. Therefore, not many questions were asked. The only thing she ever told me about herself was that her name was Lizzy."

"She was, so to speak, the original Lizzy," Don understood.

"If you want so," Red nodded. "However, I didn't know whether this was her real name. I didn't know her full name anyway, no phone number, address, job, popular places, to whom she was married... - absolutely nothing that would have given me a clue to be able to find her. We met a few months, every Thursday afternoon in a little motel, and then, one day, she didn't come. I went there another three, four times to see whether she would change her mind. But she never showed up. I had to accept that it was over." He sighed. "I have never regretted anything in my whole life more than to accept her anonymity."

"Why?" Don asked, although he already had a certain notion.

Red sighed once again before he replied: "About one year later I received a small package - the pocket watch. The attached letter informed me that the baby in Lizzy's arm was mine. And if I did not want anything happen to her, and if I wanted to see her one day, I should take into consideration to do certain things." He grimaced with pain.

Don frowned in confusion. "They told you, the baby was a girl?"

"Yes. At first, I refused to be blackmailed," Red went on. "Instead, I demanded a proof that the child was really mine. As a result I received two cut-off baby fingers." Still today it shuddered him when he remembered. "At that time DNA technology wasn't so far developed as it is today but at least, a degree of relationship could be ascertained, so that I had to assume it was really my daughter."

Oh no, it was even worse than he had thought! Horrified Don stared at Reddington, while he was trying to realize the full meaning of this information.

"That was the moment my life started to go sideways," Red said. "It's not an excuse. I could have told my wife, my superiors, the FBI... But I decided not to. Instead, I got involved in the extortion. I didn't want them to send her to me in pieces. I didn't want to be responsible for her death." He took a deep breath. "I learnt during these years that it is always better to refuse to be blackmailed. You can't make things right. It'll just get worse. It started with some rather harmless secret information I should pass on. There were long breaks in between. Sometimes I wouldn't hear from them a year. And then it got worse and worse. I never received any proof of life, never got any closer to the question who Lizzy really was, where she was, where my daughter was... And then... something really horrible happened, and I decided to go underground, to escape from it all."

"You became Ahab," Don remembered the name Reddington had used once at the beginning of his cooperation with the FBI. "And the number 1 on your list is Moby Dick. That's the one who sent you the pocket watch."

Red cocked his head and looked at Donald, hoping he hadn't given away too many information. "Yes."

"Do you know who Moby Dick is?"

"I have collected many small pieces but I still haven't been able to look at the whole picture. Circumstances are far more complex than I imagined in the beginning."

"And Liz is the key to it, sort of?"

Red hesitated a moment, then he nodded. "Yes." He wasn't willing to give any more information. He had told enough. Now it was the younger man's turn.


	3. Chapter 3

With slightly shaking hands Don took his wallet from his pocket and opened it. "This is the original photo." He held it out to Reddington. "You were blackmailed with my twin sister, but the baby in the picture in the watch - that's me." He hardly dared to look up. How would Red react?

For a while Red stared at the picture, that was so familiar to him, without understanding. It was the same picture. The same young, blond, enticing woman - but with TWO babies in her arms, while the photo in the pocket watch was cut in a way that only the child on the right was to be seen. Donald... was HIS child?!

But he had checked Ressler's background thoroughly when the young agent had appeared as his new pursuer. There hadn't been absolutely anything that would have appeared suspicious, familiar or strange. He had been surprised merely at the fact that such a young and at that time still quite inexperienced agent had been assigned to a major case like his - and on the top of it with the confidential order not to bring him in but to execute him. This had been done deliberately, Red realized, and his blood ran cold.

Both men looked up at the same time, looked at each other.

"What has happened to your sister?" Red asked. He had always expected to - maybe, maybe - meet a young woman with two missing fingers one day. A son had been beyond his imagination. Therefore, he needed a moment to get used to that thought.

"My mother said, she had died as a baby of the sudden infant death syndrome," Don replied. "This is the only photo of her. But... maybe it's not right at all." It was his main problem. - Everything seemed to be put into question suddenly. Everything he had believed to know about himself and his family seemed to turn out as a lie. Nothing he scrutinised with the certainty that he was Reddington's son could withstand.

Red saw the desperation in Donald's eyes, sensed how hard it had hit him to discover that he had been lied to all those years. Beliefs, motives, maybe even character traits, the reason why Donald was the agent in charge - everything had been manipulated.

"I guess, your alleged biological father was your hero," Red said softly. The flawless federal agent with the coastguard, John Ressler, who lost his life heroically during an incident at sea when Donald had been four years old, had what it took to be the perfect hero for a little boy. And now, Donald had to learn that his biological father was a criminal, a traitor.

"He was... but... it's possible that he never existed," Don said in despair. "Everything I know about him is what my mother had told me. And there's only one single photo of him. I don't bear the slightest resemblance to him. I have no own recollection of him. Sure, you don't remember much of what you've experienced as a toddler, but there are, nevertheless, a few flashbacks of certain events - and there is not one in which my alleged father would appear. I can't even remember the burial - supposedly with 'all honour' - although my mother said, I had been there. You would remember such an essential event, wouldn't you?"

"You probably would," Red agreed. "Nevertheless, you wanted to be like him, didn't you? And that's probably what they wanted you to want." It was so easy to manipulate children in a way that they believed in the end it had been their own idea.

"Probably. And my mother... I can't tell you anything about her." This knowledge had shocked Don most. "I don't know what she worked. She went to work sometimes, sometimes even in the middle of the night, but I don't know where she went or what she did there. Later I thought, it might have been something you are ashamed of telling your child - a erotic bar or something like that. But now I think... What if she was paid to get pregnant from you?!" Had she ever loved him at all? She hadn't been a bad mother but sometimes she had been rather impatient. Had it been only a mean to an end? Or had she been blackmailed, used, forced to be Reddington's honeytrap?

Red sensed what Donald was worried about, and it caused an inner pain. Was this unknown enemy really that heartless to abuse innocent children for his absurd game? "As far as I know, nature makes a woman to love her child," he tried to comfort Donald and took the younger man's hand. To his relief Donald didn't refuse. "Maybe she was in a hopeless situation."

"And if SHE is behind all this?" Don asked, and all at once he had the feeling that he had to suffocate, to choke by all these terrible thoughts. How could anyone make somebody have to do such horrible considerations about his own mother? "Sometimes she received strange phone calls," he recalled. "I don't know about whom or what it was about, but she often argued with someone. And - I never met any relatives of her. No grandparents, aunts, cousins, no one. No close friends. There were only normal people, y'know, neighbours, mothers of other children. I don't even know whether she really died in that car accident. Maybe she simply disappeared because her job was done for the moment."

Red knew that Donald's mother died - or allegedly died - when Donald had been about ten years old. No, she died, it came to his mind suddenly, in January 1991, shortly after he had abandoned his family and his country. Oh my God! For a child at that age there was nothing worse than to lose the mother. To think now, that everything might have been just a fake, had to be horrible. "I'm so sorry you were dragged into all this, because of me," he said, deeply moved, and caressed Donald's hands.

"It's not your fault," Don said and fought back his tears. "Somebody uses both of us as pawns in some kind of weird game - including the plan that I was supposed to hunt you down and put a bullet in your head! Everyone always urged me to become a cop, a federal agent, just like my alleged father, and then... I was assigned to that case. This is definitely no coincidence!"

"Do you know who assigned you to it?"

"No. Assistant Director Sherman, Cooper's predecessor, gave me the file but he said, I must have made an impression on someone high above. So it wasn't his decision." Back then, Don had been so proud of that he had been selected for such a major case, for such an important mission. Now he was horrified by the thought that he almost had killed his own father.

"Well, I would say, we were both lucky that I avoided you," Red said ironically. In fact, his blood ran cold while he was trying to imagine what would have become of his son if he had been successful. Whatever Donald might see in him - a criminal, a traitor - he would have hardly been able to live with the guilt of having killed his own father. "And, good Lord, I'm glad I saved you life," it occurred to him. If he had decided differently at that time, then HE might have been the one now who felt guilty.

"I had to think of that incident, too, when I saw the picture in the pocket watch," Don said. "Back then, I didn't think much about the fact that we share the same blood type - even if it is rare. A coincidence, I thought. But in connection with the photo... I... I took a used plaster from the garbage at that day and ran an anonymous DNA-test," he confessed. "I needed to be sure, and I didn't want to run it through our database... And it is really true!" He looked at Red in despair. Certainly, his relationship to Reddington had changed since Red saved his life, but he had never trusted him completely or loved him with all his heart. On the other hand, Red had treated him almost fatherly sometimes, so that Don had an imagination of how Red probably would have been as a father. To his surprise he hoped with all his heart Red wouldn't reject him but accept him as his son.

"I guess, I'm not exactly the father you wanted," Red assumed, still holding the hands of the younger man.

"And I'm not the child you wanted," Don replied and was afraid of the truth.

Red saw the fear in Donald's eyes, and for one moment it surprised him. Did Donald honestly want him as his father? He was like a symbol of everything Donald hated and detested. On the other hand, it was quite simply the natural wish of every child to be loved by its parents. No matter whether they were the worst people on earth. No matter how old the child was. And now, with the love of his mother in question, it was presumably important to him that his father at least didn't hate him.


	4. Chapter 4

"Maybe you won't believe me, Donald," Red said after a while. "But I do like you. You have character traits, beliefs, values, and principles for which I feel respect, even if they were often directed against me. And I liked you long before this moment. To learn now that you are my son surprises me, but I'm not shocked," he pointed out. "This child means a lot to me. It has always meant a lot to me. I always had the hope I would find it one day and hold it my arms." He smiled wistfully. "Of course, I thought it would be a daughter, not a son, or even twins, but it doesn't change anything, Donald. I LOVE THIS CHILD," he stressed.

It was too much. Simply too much. To his anger and his shame Don wasn't able to hold back his tears anymore. Was there anything more embarrassing than to cry in front of your own father? But the situation was so prodigious that he wasn't able to control himself.

Red had the impression he could feel Donald's inner pain, and he felt hurt himself. Above all, he felt guilty. Of course, they had been played. But his child had been hurt because of him. He also felt ashamed in an uncertain manner. There was nothing left at him his son could have been proud of.

He pulled Donald closer, kissed him fatherly on the forehead, then took him in his arms, and held him very tight. The awareness of that he finally held his child, THIS child in his arms filled him with warmth and made him happy. It didn't feel strange or unfamiliar at all when he caressed Donald's shoulders and hair to comfort him.

Involuntarily Don moved closer, hid his face at Red's shoulder, and held on to him until the pain abated. But he didn't move. Instead, he tried to understand. That wasn't Reddington, the criminal, who embraced him, it was his Dad! As a child Don had had that dream that his father hadn't died at sea but would come back one day and embrace him. This dream had come true now - but with the wrong father! He felt safe and well, though, and it surprised him.

"The worst feeling is that I don't know what was for real and what was a fake," he said after a while. That's how Liz had to feel, he realized, not to know who her real parents were and what had happened in her early childhood. "How can someone do something like that? Create a whole family story in order to get some secret papers?"

"I wish I could tell you," Red replied with a deep sigh.

"Is Liz my sister?"

Was Donald in love with her? Yesterday Red wouldn't have been happy about it but right now it felt great, like a warming spark of hope for a better future. Liz could be his daughter-in-law one day, the mother of his grandchild... "No, she's not your sister. She's - probably - the daughter of Moby Dick."

Don received the answer with relief. It would have felt too strange being her brother. He didn't want to be her brother.

"And it hurts to know that it could have saved me from the hell I had to go through," he admitted for the first time in his life. "When there is one thing I know about you for sure, it's that you would never hurt a child."

Red pricked his ears. "Who hurt you? Your stepfather?"

Don nodded without looking at Red. "He was violent. His rules were extremely strict, and if you violated them - and many were so strict that you had no choice than to violate them - then..." Being beaten up regularly had intensified his wish - or the wish he had been made believe he had - to become a cop because he had wanted to learn how to protect himself and others who couldn't help themselves. In the beginning it had been a lot more important to him than to chase people like Reddington but of course, such a case was conducive for the career.

If Don had looked up, he would have seen Red's killing glance. Donald's stepfather was lucky that he had died a few years ago of cancer. Otherwise, Red would have paid him a visit.

"And the missed possibilities...," Don said sadly. "Regardless of what you've become, I think you had been a good father."

It brought tears to Red's eyes. Donald was right. He would have loved it to be his father, father of these twins, would have loved it to raise them, to see them growing up. And he felt touched because Donald was able to see his good qualities, too, not only the bad ones.

"It would have been nice," he agreed. "I bet, you were a sweet, little boy." He smiled pensively and dared to caress Donald's cheek, that still was a little wet from the tears. "We would have played soccer in the garden. Built a tree house. Gone for fishing and sailing. And I would have bored you to death with all my stories." He chuckled lightly, then sighed blessedly while he imagined all the things they could have done together.

It almost made Don cry again. Yes, all that could have been possible if it hadn't been taken away from them. "Instead, we belong to different worlds now and stand on different sides," he remarked bitterly.

Red put a finger under Donald's chin and made him softly to lift the head and look at him. "But we can find out together, why all that happened and who is responsible for it."

"I can't be the leading case agent anymore," Don said in despair. It was another aspect that made him unhappy. He had worked so hard, and now he would have to leave the task force.

"Donald, if you tell anyone that you are my son, the FBI will not only reassign you from the case but expatriate you for the rest of your career. The only thing they will let you do will be working cold cases or something like that," Red warned him insistently. "And the last thing I want is that you have to suffer because of me. What you have been through is enough. They will distrust you - simply because you are my child. I do not want you to pay for my sins," he stressed.

Don hesitated. Red was presumably right. And he already had breached the protocol more than one time. He had hidden his addiction, he had covered up Liz' felony and had lied for her - to his boss and the general attorney. Could it be worse? He also wanted to get to the bottom of this mess, wanted to find out whether his twin sister and maybe even his mother were still alive. "Okay," he said quietly.

Red nodded. The new knowledge might be a lead to "Moby Dick". Then he would need Lizzy - and Lizzy needed Donald. The three of them simply had to stay together to solve, finally, the puzzle that had brought them together.

"And I thank you for not hating me," Red said, deeply moved. "I can't find the right words for telling you what it means to me." He kissed Donald on the cheeks and took him in his arms once more, held him very tight. His child. He still couldn't believe that he found, finally, one of his lost children.

In this very moment Red decided not only to find "Moby Dick" but also to fight for having a relationship with his son. For Donald this might be inconceivable at the moment, because the dutiful federal agent wasn't able to imagine it, but Red didn't want to accept the line between them. There had to be a way, and he would find it.


	5. Chapter 5

_It's some weeks later. During an operation in the field Don was shot, not critically, but in such a way that he was taken to hospital to get a proper treatment - an opportunity for Red to deepen their relationship. (The chapter is to be seen as a one-shot-story, that's why it's a little bit longer than the previous ones.)_

* * *

><p><em><em>When Don left the treatment room and entered the lively entrance hall of the hospital, he felt that the local anaesthesia was already wearing off. The doctor had offered painkillers to him, but Don had refused them. He didn't want to revert to that bad habit once again - with the prospect of going through another withdrawal.

He rather had to get used to living with constant pain. Of course, he had been lucky that they had been able to save the leg at all but some nerve endings would probably never regenerate, so that he was reminded of the injury every day, especially in winter when it got very cold.

Now there was a new injury. Luckily, it wasn't as bad as the old one so that he would be fine in a week or two. He should be able to endure it.

"Donald! There you are!" Red's voice tore Don from his thoughts, and he saw Red hurrying towards him. Before he could say or do anything Red had already embraced him and had kissed him on the cheeks.

"Ouch," Don said when Red held him too tight and bruised the injured arm inadvertently. "How did you know I'm here? Or... y'know what? Forget the question." Red always knew everything, found out everything.

"I'm sorry." Red stepped back and looked at Donald carefully. "What happened?"

"Caught a bullet," Don replied calmly. It was nothing special in his job. "I'll live. It's just a flesh wound. It had to be stitched up but it will be fine."

Red looked at Donald's right arm that had been immobilised with a sling, at the blood that had spread on the suit, and then at Donald's pale face. Sure, Donald was a highly trained federal agent and used to situations like these. Nevertheless, Red also felt with him as if he was a little child that felt and hurt its knee. "I suppose, it hurts, doesn't it? Too bad that you shouldn't take any painkillers."

"Did Liz tell you that?" Don asked distrustfully. At least, no one except her knew about it!

"No." Red didn't want to give away his source. Instead, he said resolutely: "I'll see you home!"

"It isn't necessary," Don refused. He didn't need anyone to look after him. "I'm able to..."

However, Red didn't accept any objections, grabbed Donald's healthy, left arm and directed him through the entrance hall, out of the hospital and to his car in which as usual Dembe was waiting patiently behind the wheel.

"We could stop on the way and buy something to eat," Red suggested, being resolved to deepen his relationship with his son. "I could cook something."

Don stared at him, dumbfounded. "You want to... cook?!"

"Why not?" Red smiled at him. "You had a long, exhausting day with a bad ending. We should do something normal. Have some fun."

"Uh... yeah," Don said, unconvinced. In the meantime, he had got used to the fact that Red was his father, however, the image of Red - after all what had happened between them in the past - standing in his tiny kitchen and roasting a steak (or whatever was on his mind) seemed to be absurd. 

* * *

><p>Half an hour later they entered Don's apartment - Dembe stayed with the car or maybe drove somewhere else, Don didn't know it.<br>Curiously Red looked around. Although he had known where Donald lived, he had never been here. It was really modest - a big living room with a kitchen unit and access to two other rooms, a bath and a bedroom. Although it was a bachelor apartment it was almost tidy and clean. At least, there weren't any empty pizza boxes or empty bottles.

He noticed the shelves with CDs, DVDs, books, and magazines which reminded him of the fact that his son was a stranger to him. He had no idea of what Donald might like or was interested in.

Don felt inhibited. It was strange to have Red, his father in his apartment, his refuge. It felt very close, very personal. "I'm gonna change clothes," he said to keep himself busy.

Red nodded. "I'll help you."

"Help me?!"

"Well, you are right-handed and hurt your right arm. That makes certain things difficult."

"It doesn't make me a helpless toddler that can't dress itself," Don retorted and entered his bedroom.

Red followed him and watched for a while how Donald tried unsuccessfully to open the clip which with the sling was fastened. Finally, he stepped to him and opened the clip. "Don't be so bitchy, Donald. It's no shame to accept help."

_Bitchy! I'm not bitchy_, Don thought indignantly but bite his tongue. Unfortunately, it was really more difficult than expected to get undressed with only one arm. Tacitly Don accepted that Red intervened whenever he failed.

"The scar doesn't look as bad as I thought," Red remarked and looked at Donald's left thigh. "But I assume it's not pleasant and hurts now and then."

"Yeah," Don admitted and hurried up to put on the jogging pants. He didn't want to stand in his undies in front of his father any longer than he had to. It was simply too embarrassing.

"Don't you have a sweatshirt with zipper?" Red asked when Donald reached for a T-shirt. "You will never be able to put this on and - least of all - take it off again."

Don had to admit that Red was right. He found a sweatshirt with zipper and allowed Red to help him to put it on and put the injured arm back in the sling.

"What happened?" Red asked and touched gently the scar of the gunshot wound on Don's left shoulder.

Don frowned. "That was you. When I chased you in Vienna. Don't tell me you don't remember that!"

Red looked at him in surprise. "No, definitely not. I assure you, I have never shot at you."

"In this dark alley? I could swear it was YOU I followed in there!"

"Yes," Red confirmed, "but there was a car waiting at the other end. I was already in the car when you entered the alley. Why should I have shot at you? You would have never caught up on me."

There really had been a car, Don remembered. It drove off when he ran into the alley. And he had to admit that he wasn't able to recognize the person who fired the shot at him. But who else should have shot at him than Red?

"After we straightened this out - may I cook for you now?" Red asked. He had admonished himself to be more patient. His son was in his mid-thirties and was used to live his own life. He couldn't go on with treating him like a child - although he would have loved to - otherwise, he would be just met with resistance.

Don understood that Red simply tried to be a father to him and probably had not a clue how to show his affection. He wasn't sure yet how he should react to it, but he nodded.

So he sat down obediently on the sofa in the living room and watched Red's activities in the kitchen unit. He really bore some resemblances to him. Especially when Don thought of old pictures of Red. As a young man Red had been blond, and he was a similar light skin type as himself. As his mother had been blond, too, the reddish might come from the grandparents. He didn't know anything about the family of his mother, about Red's only that the parents and a sister had died in the meantime.

His grandfather had also been in the Navy, a proud, patriotic family of which Red was the black sheep now. Red had a daughter, it came to Don's mind, Jennifer. His half-sister. Strange feeling to know that he had a sister he had never met and probably would never meet.

Meanwhile, Red enjoyed the cooking. It had been a while since he had cooked by himself, and he enjoyed doing something so normal. Donald's kitchen wasn't well equipped but it was enough to prepare steaks, pasta with sauce, and a salad. And he enjoyed being with his son, although Donald was still a bit snappish now and then.

"I'll cut the meat for you, okay?", he said when he, finally, laid the small dining table and served the food.

Don was about to contradict but he had to realize that it would be difficult to cut the steak with only one hand. So he nodded and sat down at the dining table. Now the arm really hurt but he didn't say anything about it. The pain spoilt his appetite a bit but he was hungry enough to eat everything.

Red watched him while they ate, and after they finished the meal he remarked compassionately: "You are in pain. Maybe you should lay down."

Was Red about to put him to bed? To Don's relief his father began to clean up, instead. "Yeah, I'll go to bed," he agreed. Maybe Red would simply leave after he had cleaned up?

While Don lay down on his favoured side of the double bed - the other half hadn't been in use for a long time - and listened to the noises from the living room he felt safe and secure in an uncertain manner and on the other hand, he was sad. It was a long time ago that someone had cooked for him. Audrey. And it was a long time ago that someone had been seriously interested in how he was. Well, except Liz. He was used to being on his own, and most of the time it didn't bother him. But sometimes it would be nice to have someone around. 

* * *

><p>After Red had cleaned up he switched off the lights in the main room and entered Donald's bedroom which was dark except of the light on the bedside cabinet. He sat down on the edge of the bed and smiled at Donald.<p>

"Will you read me a bedtime story now?" Don asked ironically.

"If you like," Red replied in the same tone. "Do you have a fairy tale book?"

It made Don smile. "No."

Red smiled back. He looked at Donald's tired face that showed the strains of the day and the pain he was suffering from, and he affectionately ran his hand over Donald's hair. "But I could bore you with a story. Maybe it'll help you sleep."

"Do you really wanna stay that long?" Don was surprised. He never slept well or long, had either nightmares and woke up in the middle of the night, or he was in pain so that it lasted very long until he was able to ignore it successfully. Probably it was the price he had to pay for his job.

"I don't have any other plans," Red replied with a smile. After a while he added: "And I want nothing more than to spend time with you. I know, it's difficult but I learnt in all those years that there's nothing more important in the world than your own children. We'll never be able to catch up but I would love to get to know you better."

Don realized that Red was absolutely serious about it. "You can't start at the time when we lost each other, though. If Audrey hadn't died, you could have tried this with your grandchild, but I'm a bit too old for bedtime stories."

"Audrey was pregnant?" Red asked and was horrified when Donald nodded. He had never thought about the possibility to be a grandfather one day. Although - Jennifer might have children. There were many aspects in his life he was perfectly fine with. The only thing he missed and regretted was that he wasn't able to have a family.

"Why don't you ask Lizzy to live here with you?" Red suggested after a moment of silence. "It's a bit small but..."

"I can't share an apartment with a female co-worker", Don cut him short and looked at him indignantly.

"Why not?"

"This would be like an experiment - put two healthy adults at the approximately same age, who both hadn't had sex for months, together in a small two-room-apartment and find out how long it will take before..."

"So what? Then you'll have an affair." Red gave a shrug.

"It's against the rules!"

"Good God, Donald, you covered up a felony - and now you worry about protocol regarding to sex with co-workers?" Red was amused but stopped laughing when he saw Donald's killing glance. "Okay, no sex," he murmured meekly.

"I like her too much to have just an affair with her," Don admitted, "and I'm afraid she's still in love with Tom."

It surprised and delighted Red that Donald revealed something so personal to him. "Yes, I suspect that, too. And that's why you should stop looking for him. You should be the one that protects and distracts her from Tom, not the one who chases him."

"But it is important to find out for whom Tom really worked."

"You don't think that he worked for Berlin?" Red tended to underestimate Donald, although the younger man was mostly able to draw the right conclusions. At the beginning of his cooperation with the FBI he had simply offended him and questioned his intelligence in situations like these. Now, this had become impossible. So many things had become impossible - manipulating, not telling everything... Red really had to be careful with what he wished but his desire to be close to his son was stronger.

"I think that Berlin is rather a group than one single man," Don explained his theory. "They smuggled Kirchhoff into the US and THEN Tom worked for him for a while. I mean, if Kirchhoff had been so mighty and clever, he would have been able to travel unseen wherever he wanted to, wouldn't he? He would have been in the US for a long time and would have observed Liz until she would have led him to you. Why should he have bothered to put Tom, a highly trained agent - and that's what I think he is - into her life and let him collect information about HER when the only thing he was interested in was to get to you? He hadn't the patience for something like that, either. When he found out that Fitch set him up he immediately rushed to kill him, without thinking twice. That doesn't make any sense when you look at the context."

And once again Donald had proven that he was able to put two and two together very well. "I've taken care of Tom," Red said. "At the moment he's neither important nor dangerous. So, stop looking for him."

"What do you mean with you've taken care of him? Did you kill him?" Don asked distrustfully. That Red was known for killing everyone who double-crossed him or was in his way was something that stood between them. Like a wall. This became very clear once again.

Red was aware of it, too, and it made him angry. But he swallowed his annoyance. He couldn't force Donald to trust him. He had to earn his trust and respect. "No. And I'm sure, one day he will appear again, like counterfeit money. But until then we should help Lizzy to get over him."

"By having an affair with her?" Don asked ironically.

"For example."

"It would be a quite bad idea."

"Maybe." Red was about to tell Donald that an affair could be the start for more but he realized that the younger man wasn't very keen on this subject. Despite the exhaustion Donald didn't look as if he would fall asleep soon, so Red asked: "Do you have some photos? From former times?"

"Not many. There is a box in there." Don gestured to a small sideboard with an old TV set on it.

Red got up and went over to the sideboard, knelt down in front of it. In the moment he opened it, it came to Don's mind that there were also some things in this sideboard that he didn't necessarily want to show to his father. But it was too late.

"Nice collection," Red said with a grin when he closed the sideboard. He sat down on the other half of the bed and switched on the second bedside lamp before he opened the box.

Embarrassed Don avoided to look at Red. In the next second he told himself that it was stupid. He wasn't 12 anymore. If he didn't want Red to treat him like a child, he shouldn't behave like one! On the other hand, who wanted to talk - no matter at which age - about sex with his parents?

The photos weren't in a particular order, and there weren't many from the time when really everyone started using digital cameras. _What a shame_, Red thought, _it is so much nicer to have pictures on photo paper, something you can have in such a box, take it out, hold it in your hands, and look at it._

Most photos had been taken at the time at which Donald had been at the boarding school and later at college. There was always someone who took photos from all kinds of events and passed on copies to everyone who had been involved.

Sadly, there weren't many pictures from the time before Donald had attended the boarding school, and only very few family pictures. No surprise if the mother and the stepfather had really worked for someone. Who would value the developing steps of a child that was only a means to an end? _How sad for Donald_, Red thought.

Donald hadn't been a happy child, he had to realize, and definitely not a happy teenager. "Did you like the boarding school?"

"Not really," Don replied, "but it was better than at home." He tried to find a more comfortable position but the arm still hurt.

"This is sweet." Finally, Red found his favourite picture. It was the only one in which Donald smiled happily. He might have been five or six years old, an exceedingly pretty child. "What were you happy about?"

Don looked at the photo that had been taken in the garden of the house in which he had grown up. "I can't remember. I don't think that it was a special occasion."

"May I have it?"

"Only if you don't treat me like a five-year-old in future." Don tried to sound strict but the long, exhausting day took its toll more and more.

"I'll try not to," Red promised, "although it's not easy."

"Why? Do I behave so childish?"

"No, not at all. I just... I'm struggling with the imagination how it would have been to raise you myself." Red smiled wistfully and looked at the picture for a while, before he put it and the box aside. He lay down next to Donald and put one arm under the neck of the younger man. "There's a pressure point in the shoulder with which you can reduce the pain," he explained and pressed his thumb on it. "Can you feel it?"

The pain really abated, and Don nodded. "Did you have some kind of medical training?"

"You learn a lot when you travel a lot," Red said modestly, and then decided abruptly: "We should travel together. Not to hunt a Blacklister, just for our own pleasure."

"Where?" Don wasn't sure whether he really wanted this.

"Wherever you like."

"Probably you would pay for everything," Don assumed. "It would be like corruption, you know that? You don't own one single legally earned Cent, and I'm a federal agent."

That hit home! Of course, Donald was right but it hurt to see the dilemma of their relationship put in a nutshell. However, Red wasn't willing to give up his plan. "It's not a request, Donald, I insist on it."

Don turned his head and looked at Red. "And what if I refuse? Will you make me bend over any available piece of furniture and slap me silly?" He asked, referring to the advice Red had once given him before he had gone to meet Laurence Dechambeau.

"There's a thought!" Red replied with a cheeky smile.

Don stared at him, dumbfounded. The last time Red had said this to him he had sent him a head in a box later. Don still shuddered with disgust when he remembered it.

"You think, I wouldn't do it?" Red asked provokingly.

"Worse. I know that you would do it."

"Then we are in complete agreement," Red said cheerfully, "you choose the destination, and we'll seize the next best opportunity to fly off."


End file.
